Image and video courtesy of McCann Melbourne.Since its founding in 1853, the University of Melbourne has become Australia’s top university, recognized by the global academic community for its contributions to countless fields including neuroscience, human development, sustainable agriculture, and nutrition.
But in 2016, the University realized that many Melburnians were unaware of the groundbreaking research conducted in their collective backyard – and that it could benefit greatly from contextualizing its contributions.
In response, UMelbourne teamed up with McCann Melbourne to create “Made Possible by Melbourne,” a series of outdoor installations featuring research projects completed at the University. The result was equal parts museum, public art series, and guided tour of Melbourne.
The campaign earned the Grand Effie at the 2018 Nagrody APAC Effie, along with 2 Gold and 3 Silver awards. The University of Melbourne also took home the top 2018 Brand and Marketer of the Year titles, and McCann Melbourne was named 2018 Agency of the Year.
We talked to Charlie McDevitt, Group Account Director at McCann Melbourne, about how this Effie-winning campaign came to life in the streets of Melbourne.
Tell us a bit about your Effie-winning effort, “Made Possible by Melbourne.” What were your objectives for this effort?
CM: The University of Melbourne is Australia’s 2nd largest investor in research behind the Australian Government.
Research is not only core to maintaining academic reputation and ranking, but it is also the driver of every other function of the University. Research attracts the brightest academic minds, and therefore attracts the best students to study at the University.
Whilst this campaign was aimed at a broad range of people, we did identify a more specific target audience, which the University refers to as ‘Esteem’.
‘Esteem’ are what Australians traditionally refer to as “ABs” – in this case, they are tertiary educated (often Melbourne graduates) professionals who hold management positions within Melbourne’s largest companies. They live close to the central business district in the more affluent suburbs of Melbourne, and commute in.
They are important to the University because they have funding and commercial partnership responsibilities within their jobs, so they would be part of any decision to financially support University research projects. But it is also important that this group hold the University in high regard because they will influence where their own children choose to study.
There was limited awareness of our research contribution amongst this target audience.
Our task was to make the research conducted at The University of Melbourne interesting and relevant enough to shift perceptions of the University from that of a teaching institution, to that of an establishment which has real global impact of which Melbourne should be truly proud.
Describe your strategic approach – what was the insight(s) that drove this effort, and how did you arrive at it?
CM: Made Possible by Melbourne aimed to take research studies that only researchers understood, and translate them for a mass audience. To do this, we focused on two main insights.
Firstly, the idea that people will only really engage with something that shows clear benefits to them, their family, their city etc. So, we highlighted research that did just that. We showed the potential of our research to impact their lives in the fields that mattered to them the most. Choosing the right research stories and mapping them to audiences was key to creating relevance.
Then, because of the fact that for the most part, research is complex, dry and conveys ideas that seem intangible, we knew we had to make it easy to understand and interesting. So we distilled the research and presented it in a way that was creative and engaging for a wide audience.
Stories featured in the exhibition included research that will improve half the world’s diet, a way to turn any water into drinking water, the creation of robotic arms with a human touch, and breakthroughs in prenatal care that will save thousands of unborn lives – to name a few.
What was your big idea? How did you bring your idea to life?
CM: Made Possible by Melbourne was a free, interactive exhibition of the University of Melbourne’s world-changing research across the entire central business district of Melbourne.
We took inspiration from the way that great museums showcase large amounts of often complex information in clear, interesting and engaging ways.
The campaign re-purposed existing outdoor media sites, using them as custom designed exhibits, connecting them with a free tram, and bringing them to life with a mobile audio guide narrated by the researchers themselves. The public were invited to explore more on pursuit.unimelb.edu.au, the University’s digital story-telling platform.
What was your biggest challenge in bringing your idea to life? How were you able to overcome that challenge?
CM: There were significant challenges! We only had about 6 weeks from when the concept was bought to when we had to be live in market. We didn’t have confirmation that the media sites could be used in this way, we didn’t have a production company to help us build the exhibits and we didn’t have full approval from the academics on what we could say about their research!
But they were overcome through a fantastic collaboration between all parties, and sheer determination to see it through.
How did you measure the effectiveness of the campaign, and why do you think the campaign was able to achieve the results it did?
CM: During the month-long exhibition event, Made Possible by Melbourne outperformed every measurable objective set, shifting the perception of the University from a teaching institution to a centre of world-changing research.
We exceeded our target for spontaneous awareness, reporting awareness of 78% among the target audience during the campaign period. The campaign also saw 34% of the audience believing that the campaign had changed how they thought about the University with 39% agreeing the University had the best reputation for research; an increase of 10%. The general population aware of the campaign were 20% more likely to recommend the University of Melbourne (62%) than those not aware (42%).
Why?
The campaign was so successful and broke category norms because it made research personally relevant and presented it in a creative, interactive and simple way that would be easily understood by all. In short, we knew that our audience needed to not only see our research, they needed to experience our research, and Made Possible by Melbourne achieved this.
Charlie McDevitt is a Group Account Director at McCann Melbourne. He is responsible for running the University of Melbourne account, and led the agency effort in producing Made Possible by Melbourne. The campaign has since won numerous international creative awards including Cannes Lions, D&AD and the Effies where it won the APAC Grand Effie in 2018.
